Lux Lucet

Assuredly, I say to you, you will by no means get out of there till you have paid the last penny.

• Matthew 5:26

“Trump administration is ‘willing to spend whatever it takes’ to mitigate coronavirus crisis says Steven Mnuchin as he continue to facilitate bipartisan negotiations – but admits unemployment could hit 25%.”

That somewhat longish headline leads a story from today, May 10, 2020, in the Daily Mail.  A few things are worth noting here.  First, the current economic crisis is called, inaccurately, the “coronavirus crisis.”  The massive unemployment and terrifying declines in industrial production that have hit the U.S. and other Western nations has not been caused by the coronavirus.  It is the government’s response to the coronavirus that is the immediate cause of the 20 + million private sector jobs lost in month of April.  To put that number is some perspective, the previous record monthly job loss number was 800,000 + which occurred during the height of the 2008 financial crisis in March 2009.  The virus did not shut down the economy and cause record job losses; the politicians and bureaucrats did.  By calling it the “coronavirus crisis,” politicians are attempting to shift the blame from themselves to a virus.

Second, the negotiations in which U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is immersed involved more money printing by the Federal Reserve and more deficit spending by Congress.  The truth, that Fed money printing and prodigal spending by Congress are the root cause of our current economic crisis, is nowhere to be seen.  Treasury Secretary Mnuchin wants you to believe that the cure for our financial woes us is doing more of the same things that put us in this mess in the first place.

Third, note well that Steve Mnuchin is facilitating “bipartisan negotiations.” As a lifelong Republican – I’m from the Tea Party/Ron Paul wing of the Republican party, not the mainstream, but nevertheless I am a Republican – I hate to admit that the my own party is in part responsible for the incompetent and immoral response to the coronavirus, a response that has included doling out literally trillions of dollars, dollars all which had to be borrowed into existence by the combined efforts of Congress and the Fed.  I would like to blame all of this on the Democrats, but that simply would not be honest.  It is Democrats and Republicans conspiring together to spend money we don’t have in ways that were never authorized by the Constitution.  With a few exceptions, nary a peep of protest is heard from either party concerning the shockingly large spending programs already put in place, programs which Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) called, “the largest wealth transfer in history.”  And now Congress is colluding with the Trump administration on even more deficit spending.

Fourth, Steve Mnuchin admits that unemployment could hit 25%.  Here’s some news for Mr. Mnuchin, most likely unemployment is already well north of that figure.  Actually, it’s probably not news to him at all.  One suspects he already knows this.  What a lot of people don’t know is that the government changed the way it calculates unemployment.  In 1994, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) stopped counting long-term discouraged workers – a long term discouraged worker is someone who has not attempted to find work in the last four weeks – as unemployed.  Previous to that, such persons were included in the unemployment calculations released by the BLS.  John Williams is an economist who runs his own website called Shadow Stats.  Among the services he provides is a monthly calculation of the unemployment rate using the government’s old method.  Want to take a guess at where he puts current unemployment?  Try 35%!  If Williams’ numbers are anywhere near accurate, we already have a far worse employment situation than what occurred during the Great Depression, which is usually estimated at 25%.  Presumably, that’s the reason Mnuchin picked the number that he did.

So much for the Daily Mail’s headline.

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